[310] in I/T Delivery
IS Work, June, 2000
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Tim McGovern)
Thu Jun 29 13:50:55 2000
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Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2000 13:50:25 -0400
From: Tim McGovern <tjm@MIT.EDU>
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Project Name: IS Work
The project formerly known as "IS Operational Plan Alive!"
Project Leaders: Tim McGovern
Report Date: June 29, 2000
Project Notebook: http://web.mit.edu/is/delivery/iswork/
*** This is the first monthly report for this project's delivery phase
Accomplishments past period (really since project inception, March 15, 2000)
- Defined and organized the project: sponsor, project leader, team & scope
- Planned the project: tasks, schedule, and responsibilities
- Completed rollout of Operational Plan data to the organization
- Drafted a variety of organizational behaviors that would support the iswork vision
- Drafted a user interface prototype
- Developed key expertise in Java servlets
- Developed schema for an Oracle database
- Drafted portions of the data migration rules from current source to target db
- Presented mid-course correction proposal to ITLT
Goals for the coming period (July)
- Replan the project with a new focus around a Filemaker database, rather than
Oracle with Java servlets (this replanning activity will begin in earnest
on July 11)
- Identify reliability, maintainability and serviceability requirements for
"departmental" systems
- Execute the new plan and begin to prepare for the transition to service
(working target date is August 17)
Issues
- Are Information Systems & ITLT ready to commit to the changes needed?
- Do we have all of the skills we need to execute the as yet unwritten new plan?
- Will be be able to hit the new target date -- without having replanned the work?
Key learnings
- Larger teams are not always able to accomplish more than smaller teams
- Project sponsors should push harder to ensure that the team assigned is the
"smallest" conceivable team to adequately complete the project
- Most team members should have a project as one of their top priorities
- The project leader should have the project as their top priority
- Project sponsors should push harder to ensure that technical designs are
as "simple" as possible for the purpose of the project
- We really need to continue to factor in geographic concerns when teams are
formed, is there is any expectation that team members will need to collaborate
Team dynamics
- The team to date has been spread across four different IS work sites, and in
spite of that, has done very well to collaborate, even when there were no
previous shared work experiences.
- The team going forward will be for the most part located in N42, and this should
give us more of an opportunity to keep the work moving ahead on a daily or
regular basis.
Additional comments
- None
